Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday February 28, 2010 @12:35AM
from the inconvenient-shareholders dept.

theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."

Feilding, Campbell-Newman and a few other engineers that couldn't do it and got into politics are batshit insane but most of the rest of us are not.The problem is we are turning into societies that love technology but really hate the underlying science. All the "don't tell me about it until I can buy it at Walmart" posts that are starting to infest this site are a symptom of that. They just want magic and are starting to think just talking about physical things can make them real instead of the process of people knowing how to do things and then making it real.It's bad news that reality involves tradeoffs to make things fit and they never want to hear the bad news. We've had a century of nearly free energy with the tradeoff of altering the atmosphere, and various idiots would not believe that even if we could tell them what time it's going to rain tomorrow morning. Others demand to know details like that and do not understand that wide trends can be predicted without knowing to the second when it's going to start raining.

If you wait until something is commonplace you miss out on a lot.
Just over a decade ago someone at the small university department I was working at managed to produce reliable semiconductor junctions a single atomic layer thick on a tiny budget (not the first to do it), while in the room next door there was a guy with adjustable variable tint window coatings that worked a lot like e-ink. It takes time to iron out the bugs, you can't buy anything at Walmart like those yet but it's still worth hearing about such things long before they get turned into consumer goods or even before anyone goes looking for funding. There was a bit in the press about synrock TWENTY YEARS before it was used commercially to store high grade radioactive waste. I saw a hybrid car built to be used at a mine site in 1987 and scramjets were under development in the same building. Very interesting stuff, but not on the shelves anywhere. It can take years between when something interesting has prototypes and when you can easily get it.The "where's my flying car now and I don't care what magic makes it work" attitude is actually fueling the bullshit PR releases you are talking about and the frequently increasing number of silicon snake oil scams. It's this bizzare obsession with technology coupled with a hatred of science - as paradoxical as young earth creationists in the oil industry.You'll NEVER be able to buy the fruit of some new developments at Walmart but that doesn't mean that it isn't useful or interesting enough to be reported. It's depressing that even this site is infested with the "don't tell me if I can't buy it" attitude.

I simply credit it to the "I can do it!" attitude that leads people to become engineers or CS people in the first place. The sense that you're smart enough to understand everything and capable enough to figure everything out. Even when you're not. It's a great attitude to have in an engineer, but it has the side effect of them assuming that they know more than people who actually do know what they're talking about.

Well, most of them probably are smart enough to understand Global Warming/Climate Change and related arguments if they had the time to study it properly. Unfortunately doing so would take years and they don't have that time available. So instead they listen to the reactionary PR from business interests who tune their sales pitch to superficially sound good and who reinforce most peoples' natural desire to avoid change.

this has nothing to do with questioning AGW and everything to do with the business community funding propaganda, from the same "research" groups that told us tobacco is perfectly safe, in order to subvert actual science.

I understand why it is more comfortable to reject a conclusion that would require "uncomfortable" changes, but that doesn't make it any less true.

I want to give you a hug, man. (But I won't. I respect your personal space.)

I'm one of those guys who suspects that global warming is probably a real phenomenon, but that its coverage in the media is mostly-fake, its coverage in science proper is mildly biased and exxagerated as an institutional matter (cf. 'climategate', overrated as it may be) and the public policy prescriptions that are preached by Al Gore are mostly nonsense. But more importantly, the state of the "debate" is shameful.

Listen, you can either drop everything and study your ass off for the better part of a decade to get a PhD in atmospheric science, or listen to the people who have them. Science isn't fair or balanced. The atmosphere doesn't care if you believe in greenhouse gases or not.

Rule of thumb: there is no provable premise in science. The only thing that exists is data that either supports your claim or doesn't. Also note that data that doesn't support your claim is not the same as disproving your claim. In that context, settled science just means that no one has been able to do a generally accepted experiment that contradicts the major ideas in a field.

I wish that people would know just these two things before talking about science.

Those who denied that a bacteria (imagine that) was responsible for most stomach ulcers were ridiculed by the established medical community (until they were proven wrong).

Wow, that's an interesting example you've picked there. I happen to know a bit about the "stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria" theory as there's a lot of Australian scientists involved. The controversy is over the claim that stomach ulcers may be caused by or made worse by bacteria in the stomach. This was considered controversial for a very simple scientific reason: no-one had found bacteria in the stomach. However there was a single data point which suggested they might actually exist.. and there were other explanations for how that single data point might be wrong, contamination being the most important.

So, for years, doctors took samples from patients with stomach ulcers and sent them to researchers who tried various methods to culture them. When they failed the objectors to the theory repeated the mantra that the same thing that makes culturing bacteria in stomach samples hard is what makes it so unlikely that there's any bacteria that live in the stomach. After lots of good science, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall managed to culture and isolate bacteria from some samples. They contended that most stomach ulcers were caused by the bacteria they had isolated and Marshall dramatically demonstrated this by drinking some of the cultures and getting very sick.

This was met with a lot of skepticism, but after careful study, by various independent groups, it was found the Warren and Marshall's technique did indeed result in measurable cultures in patients with gastritis and to a lesser extent stomach ulcers. To-date no clear link has been established between H. pylori and the majority of stomach ulcers. So really, although their work was good science and improved our understanding of stomach pathogens, they were wrong, it doesn't cause most stomach ulcers. Maybe time will prove them right, but for the attention span of the media it doesn't matter, the media will keep repeating that Warren and Marshall defied the conventional wisdom of the day and proved that bacteria cause all forms of stomach ulcer because that's an interesting story.

That said, my dad suffered from stomach ulcers for 20 years or more. He'd go through two bottles of Mylanta a week. Once this bacterial theory proved fruitful, a simple course of tailored antibiotics cured his stomach within several weeks. Not an ulcer since.

Sigh.. what didn't I make clear? There's lots of different sorts of ulcers. Some ulcers are caused by these bacteria, and antibiotics can fix them, but some are not. The story which is continually repeated in the media and by the guy I replied to is that all ulcers are caused by these bacteria. This is simply false and its a good example of how the media reverberates a good story even if it is inaccurate.

And btw, doctors don't just prescribe antibiotics to anyone with ulcers and hope they go away.. the exact type of antibiotics that they use are quite dangerous to healthy individuals and the treatment is no picnic. Instead they take samples of the ulcer, send it to a lab to be tested, and if the tests indicate the cause of the ulcer is bacteria, then they prescribe antibiotics. That treatment is 90% effective.

"Science also didn't care if preservatives in vaccines led to autism. The media cared a lot. Articles in peer reviewed journals thought it did "

There was _one_ paper, in _one_ journal that suggested a link between vaccines and autism. The study was widely criticised by many scientists and was subsequently retracted. Hardly the protracted controversy that you imply it was.

I see someone else has already discredited your claim about stomach ulcers also.

Look, no one is saying science is perfect, but in general: when there is a scientific consensus it implies there is a modicum of truth.

Are you implying that the geocentric theory of the universe was a scientific theory? It was Galileo who was one of the early proponents of the heliocentric theory. Heliocentrism was first proposed by Copernicus. Both these men are today regarded as early scientists.

So, despite your apparent attempt at sarcasm, yes: there are a lot of parallels between GW and geocentric theories. In both cases there was/is an entrenched and powerful body defending a claim that was/

Remember for how long the tobacco industry denied that their was a health risk to smoking? Oh they were so happy to point out all the old people who smoked and still had gotten old, surely that proved how wrong all the scientist were and that there scientist who got their paycheck from them were right.

Or car safety. No sir, seatbelts kill people.

Look at Mythbusters, just how many stupid myths people want them to investigate over and over because they just want to believe some silly idea. Using a net in your pickup truck to safe fuel... IF that is going work, it only works in an empty truck AND one that doesn't need the door... so why have you got a pickup truck then? You drive a three ton vehicle with huge wasted space and worry about saving a few nickels.

One simple example of how denialists think, is that they have leaped on "global warming" rather then "global climate change". It is easier, anytime it snows you can shout "see, the world ain't getting warmer". Climate change is harder to debunk because ordinary farmers can tell you about it. Just a few more days of rain, or less can ruin a crop. And our western society isn't based on our universities, it is based on our farms. Farms that put plenty of food in our bellies, so much that very clever people can think very clever ideas and still think milk comes from a carton. The more intelligent a creature the less time it spends hunting for food == the less time hunting for food, the more intelligent you can become.

But what if the climate does happen to change? It could radically shift were what types of food can be grown. You might think grain is just about putting a seed in the ground and coming back half a year later to mow it, but it is a delicate process. A frost at the wrong time, not enough rain at some point, to much at another, can ruin the crop.

Right now, in the west we are incredible luck. A man can feed himself well for an entire day with about ONE hour of work, even on low pay. Say that prices double, what effect would that have on our society? Less money to spend on education, less money on healthcare. Less money to spend on taxes to fund the country as a whole.

People can understand that if the planet had just a slightly different orbit it would be a desolate place like mars or venus. But they don't understand that those two weeks of warm dry weather in fall are more then just a nice end to the summer, they are the time farmers need to make hay. No hay, no cheap cattle food for the winter, means that other places must grow the food that costs more and can't grow human food.

But hey, as long as you can drive your 3 ton pickup truck that never picks anything up, you can deny all you want. Just like a smoker with only 1 lung left and no larynx denies that there is anything wrong with smoking.

And really, the entire problem is just as with smoking, by the time we got the absolute evidence (you died from a tar lung) it really is to late.

I've brought this up a few times on various boards. What happened during the tobacco 'debates' is exactly what is happening in the AGW 'debates' now.

Same funding model. Wealthy individuals/companies fund 'think tanks' for the purpose of spreading misinformation. Those think tank 'experts' get air time on TV and radio because a heated debate is more entertaining than a report about a consensus. And there is also great pressure to be 'fair and balanced' to corporations who are your major source of adverti

1. people who accept poor salaries and working conditions to dedicate their lives to the pursuit of truth and knowledge are as likely to "ignore scientific evidence for financial gain" as those who pursue power and wealth in big business.2. every person on Earth is biased and corruptible to exactly the same extent.

And you, sir, are not helping by demonizing those who think differently than you.

There wasn't any demonization in the original post. There's a difference between dismissal and demonization.

On the other side you have... those who ignore scientific evidence for financial gain.

...but that, on the other hand, comes close, in addition to being laughably irrational. People who are seriously interested in financial gain, if they go into the sciences at all, certainly aren't going to pick climatology as their cash cow. And once ensconced in climatology, there's no particular financial incentive to espouse any particular theory. "Hey, I really made a bundle off of my latest paper on upper-atmosphere particulates in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes." Riiiiiiight.

As with religious fundamentalists who like to argue that science is a religion, absurd accusations of this sort usually say a great deal more about the accuser than the accused.

Is climate science a multi-billion dollar industry? I'm pretty sure there's quite some faculty devoted to climate science, but an actual industry, where hundreds of climate scientists are producing product for the benefit of climate investors and a climate CEO? The closest thing I can think of is the alternative energy industry, but even though these do ride the climate hype, that industry is primarily focussed on getting rich out of the dissappearing reserves of fossil fuels.

And you, sir, are not helping by demonizing those who think differently than you.
Saying the previous poster is demonizing is a bit harsh, don't you think. That being said...
The physical properties of CO2 are well known. It's heat capacity and spectral data aren't something people can deny. How it interacts with the solar radiation is very well understood. It is a green house gas. Even the scientists who have looked at the data and disagree with man made global warming aren't going to say it isn't a

You sound like one of the retards who say that one shouldn't bother to vote in the USA

First, I'll ignore the politically incorrect slur, and the further attempt at demonization that serves only to make people think less of you, not me.

Secondly, what does one have to do with the other? Is it so wrong to ask that long-term science be untangled from the rapacious tentacles of political actors like some really bad anime that I have no choice but to watch, and which comes with a dub that is simply an overlay of

It's interesting how those who deny man's impact on global warming, or global warming itself, can claim victory if people like Gore and others succeed in preventing it. They'll sit back and say, "Told you so. The earth's still here, isn't it? We're still living, aren't we? No matter what we did, it would've happened like this anyhow."

> Have you read the interview Phil Jones did with the BBC. He came clean and admitted that there is no evidence of man made global warming. This is the TOP GUY, who still believes its true, and given millions upon millions to prove it over a 20 year period, he was unable to.

I love seeing that interview raised in debates on global warming because it quickly tells me who the liars and pretenders are. If you are prepared to portray it in such a fashion then you're clearly either so biased or so ignorant th

Why yes, I have. You quite obviously have not or you wouldn't have come up with this bullshit:

He came clean and admitted that there is no evidence of man made global warming.

This can only be described as a blatant lie, given that when the BBC asked him "How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?", his reply was actually:

I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - [...] there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

I know this was supposed to be humorous, but you do know that only a very small minority of penguins actaully live where it snows, right? The empror penguins live in one of the most inhospitable locations on the planet (south pole... so nowhere near the polar bears at the north pole), but most species of penguins live quite a bit north of there on coasts that never freeze. So the only way globabl warming is likely to kill off the penguins is by raising sea lelels enough to wipe out their traditional hatching grounds. And that is probably going to happen slowly enough that they will move those up-hill.

The real news is that, according to the article, Steve Jobs is planning on using Apple's $40 billion in cash to throw a toga party!

Besides the environment, many homed in on the theme of just what Apple plans on doing with all that cash it has sitting around--approximately $40 billion in reserve, Apple reported last quarter. One shareholder asked if Apple might consider investing in electric-car maker Tesla. To that, Jobs replied he was planning on throwing "a toga party" with the money instead.

Because, seriously? Al Gore's movie came out like a couple years ago, and global climate change isn't something that you're going to see happening in dramatic fashion in a couple years. How is that not common knowledge?

What, you expect lack of knowledge on an issue to stop people from commenting on it? You *don't* expect to hear straw men?

Random straw man example: the "glaciers aren't melting" comment. First off, most glaciers are in decline [nasa.gov], so they're wrong. But more importantly, AGW does not mean that all glaciers will decline. Glacier melt rates certainly affect rate of flow. But so does snowfall rate, and there are a good number of lesser factors (for example, how strongly pack ice holds back the front of the glacier). Some glaciers almost never experience temperatures above freezing, so melt rate isn't a significant issue for them; it's all about the balance between snowfall and discharge rate (which partly depends on pack ice if it reaches the sea). Snowfall rate and how well pack ice is retained depends on how weather patterns and ocean currents and temperatures change in the area. In most areas, the average precipitation increases in AGW scenarios. Oceans generally warm (although not evenly, thanks in large part to thermohaline cycling). And ocean currents vary. So you can't make any general comment about how all glaciers will react.

A good example of something that's been misused by *Gore*, to be even-handed here, is Kilimanjaro. Gore cited it as an example of climate change. It was probably one of the worst cases he could have picked. The summit of Kilimanjaro almost never goes above freezing. The rate of glacier change is a balance between snowfall and sublimation. Most (although not all) papers on the subject indicate that the balance of these two has indeed shifted due to human activity -- but primarily the raising of food in the region, not warming.

It's really a shame that Gore picked that case, because most glacier declines that have been studied have been determined to be primarily due to warming (esp. inland/temperate/mountain glaciers). But not Kilimanjaro.

It's all well and good to point out the realities behind glacial melting. But it misses the more fundamental problem with the glacial quote - the 2035 claim was treated in the past by prominent figures of AGW as studied science, as an incontrovertible fact.

So the reality that in fact the quote came from one off the cuff comment, when people were once called "deniers" before for questioning it - well that begs the question, what else are peopl

But it misses the more fundamental problem with the glacial quote - the 2035 claim was treated in the past by prominent figures of AGW as studied science, as an incontrovertible fact.

Um, no. Anyone who wanted to get info on glacier forecasts would have turned to WG1, which is the working group that covered the science of global warming. Which *did* get it right. WG1 is held to a higher standard than WG2 and WG3. WG1 is written by climate scientists, is heavily reviewed, and uses almost no gray literature. WG2 is written by ecologists and uses a small but relevant amount of gray literature. WG3 is written by economists and people in industry, and contains a small but relevant amount of gray literature.

So the reality that in fact the quote came from one off the cuff comment

It was the conclusion of a not-yet-published paper. Calling it an "off the cuff comment" is a deliberate attempt to downplay that. Yes, the WG2 team screwed up there. On about two sentences of one page of a thousand page report -- one of three reports. Tell you what. You write a flawless 3,000 page report, then we'll talk.

Yes, the WG2 team screwed up there. On about two sentences of one page of a thousand page report

Yes and then the head of the IPCC proceeded to widely publicize this one screw-up as factual beforehand, magnifying the problem a thousandfold. Normally one mistake in the middle of a huge document would not matter - but in the end it did matter because of how they used this without double-checking. If you are going to tell heads of state how to act based on some data it doesn't matter how much of a 3000 page r

A good example of something that's been misused by *Gore*, to be even-handed here, is Kilimanjaro. Gore cited it as an example of climate change. It was probably one of the worst cases he could have picked. The summit of Kilimanjaro almost never goes above freezing. The rate of glacier change is a balance between snowfall and sublimation. Most (although not all) papers on the subject indicate that the balance of these two has indeed shifted due to human activity -- but primarily the raising of food in the region, not warming.

Don't be so sure.

The observed surface lowering is now partially the result of surface melting, a recent phenomenon as confirmed by obser- vations of the ice cores drilled to bedrock in 2000. The upper 65 cm of the 49-m NIF core 3 is the only portion containing elongated bubbles, channels, and open voids characteristic of extensive melting (Fig. 3A) and refreezing; these features are not observed in the lower sections of any cores (Fig. 3B). This finding is significant, because it confirms the absence of surface melting for the prior 11 millennia.

>> You do realize, they've been in decline for about the last 18k years, right? Since the last glacial period.

Quite the pedant. The GP poster wasn't talking about a very tiny decline.No-one is trying to claim that the climate doesn't change. The problem is how quickly it is currently changing.

If the temperature had been increasing for the last 18k years as fast as it has risen for the last few decades, we'd currently be experiencing temperatures nearing the 300 degrees Celcius mark, and the glaciers would have long since melted.

Not in the traditional standard english sense of sentence, no. But in conversational use, people talk like that. If you're having trouble with it, it means that I'm incredulous as to the seriousness of the person I'm responding to.

Gore never once claimed that the glaciers would be completely melted by 2010. But that doesn't stop some idiot from claiming that Gore is a "laughingstock". Never mind that the glaciers *are* diminishing.

I'm usually of the opinion that idiots like this Apple shareholder should

One comment by a single share holder doesn't set a "tone". I've seen videos of the meeting, and you always have share holders like this. Not only that, but this same person was widely booed by other share holders as he ranted against Al Gore.

In the US, people are nice to each other and the fact that people are entitled to their own opinion is taken very far. In my country, people are blunt and tell you if you're wrong (and why). If you live in a country where myths like creation are vigorously propagated, discussion about it is discouraged and ignoring facts is encouraged, isn't the US at a natural disadvantage when it comes to discussing factual issues? People can only too easily mistake their opinion for true/a fact, and not as something that may be in for a rewrite. This is exacerbated by the drive of the more outspoken (conservative, if I may say so) people to push their thoughts on others. We have (a minority of) creationists in our country too. We let them keep their thoughts and they don't bother us with theirs.

After years on slashdot, I still am often taken aback by lines of reasoning that boil down to: xyz is expensive, so phenomenon pqr does (not) exist). Uh, gulp. In this specific case of global warming: What can possibly be wrong with taking a couple of measures that make the initial cost go up and the cost of use go down. You pay the same (in the end), but do longer with a resource. Some allergy that the state could come up with a sensible idea is enough to throw some people into fits (look at the signature lines of several posters here on slashdot). There isn't a law of nature that says that *everything* a government proposes is wrong.

Saving energy can be so easy. For some homes: Take taking a shower. The water that drains is still warm. You can buy a counter-current heat exchanger that recuperates about 40% of the heat (you have to have a mixing shower faucet, or whatever it is called, to use this). You have the same comfortable showers, except that you use less energy. The important difference is that the initial outlay is higher (but your energy bill is lower). The unborn can't bid with you for that energy. Do you really have the liberty to waste it, our is it OK if a government looking further than the next election says: Hm, we're going to introduce some bills to encourage you to reconsider wasting that energy.

Yes, you need to invest energy into extract copper from ore etc. to create such a device. But, if the device is discarded after a couple of decennia, you've high grade copper that can be recycled with very little energy.

Again, I think this post supports my statements.

- Why is the yardstick of having to create a device used for this device to discard it as a valid proposal, where your argument goes for any device for generating (or saving) energy? What is so special about the device that makes it more import

one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders

Al Gore's 100 ft. houseboat: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gore-hits-the-waves-with-a-massive-new-houseboat/ [pajamasmedia.com]
my boat:
cheap 8 ft. kayak
Yet, he gets to lecture me about carbon usage. Gore is a lightening rod of bad PR for everything he touches. That alone should make the Apple stockholders wary for electing him to the board. Making energy so expensive that the poor cannot afford it, while allowing the wealthy to use as much as they want through "carbon offsets" is one of the most despicable scams ever floated. Mr. Gore, if the planet is in such danger, then lead by example. Put on Gandi's loincloth first before telling the rest of us that we are wearing too much clothing. If we must use less energy, so be it. Then ration it. Then, if I have enough to last all month, Mr. Gore will be in the dark in his freezing cold home for three and a half weeks. By the way, Mr. Gore, the science is not settled simply because you say that it is. The bottom line: 1. don't lecture me 2. Stop trying to take money out of my pocket and putting it in yours.

If there's even the slightest chance global warming is a hoax, we should feel free to use as much energy and non-renewable resources as possible because we'll figure out a way to work around it when they're much more difficult to come by. You believe in technology and human ingenuity, don't you?

Me: "So, God gave us dominion over the Earth, correct? He put us in charge of His creation?"Them: "Yes."Me: "So, if a parent told their children, 'We're going to be out for an hour. We're leaving you in charge of the house while we're goine,' and they came home and the house was burned down... how happy do you think they'd be with their children?"

Revelations 11:18 (KJV) - And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.

Most atheists and agnostics I know question (or deny - but that seems to be a dirt word nowadays)the validity of man-cause global warming.

I've found that's because most Atheists or Agnostics have better BS detectors and critical thinking skills. In short, we are skeptics, meaning we question most anything that doesn't have hard evidence to support it.

I don't put stock in any fairy tale, whether it be about Santa Claus, God, or conspiracy theories, unless there is evidence to back it up. They do make fun thinking exercises, though.

I've found that's because most Atheists or Agnostics have better BS detectors and critical thinking skills. In short, we are skeptics, meaning we question most anything that doesn't have hard evidence to support it.

I don't put stock in any fairy tale, whether it be about Santa Claus, God, or conspiracy theories, unless there is evidence to back it up. They do make fun thinking exercises, though.

Hasn't it become so easy these days to lump God in with Santa Claus, and conspiracy theories? You must have a great BS detector and all, but I question the open-mindedness of anyone (even Dawkins) who, without the slightest explanation, compares God, first, to Santa Claus, and second, to unnamed conspiracy theories. The implied nuances of your claims are so drastic, I doubt you understand the very things that you're saying.

The magnitude of the claims set forth about God are reason enough to consider the que

your the one claiming god exists, it's up to you to prove his existence. that's how it works, you make the claim, you provide the proof. otherwise i can just say "aliens stole my lunch money", and claim victory when you fail to prove me wrong.

there's nothing setting god apart from a fairy tale in the eyes of someone demanding proof of his existence, the both lack any physical evidence.

Math doesn't demand any physical evidence of it's existence; it doesn't physically exist. Math is just a language used to describe other things. Math itself doesn't describe any physical reality, only the application of math may do so.

If you claim 1 + 1 = 2, you only need the internal consistency of math. If you claim 1 apple + 1 apples = 2 apples, you could ask for physical evidence.

Fairy tales and the notion of a god both describe things which would have a physical reality, thus both require physical evidence.

Let's try an analogy. We are at the airport. Someone calls in that there is a bomb threat and that if we don't respond immediately, the whole thing is gonna go up in flames. Now, is it not the responsible thing to investigate these claims, no matter how outlandish they may seem?

That doesn't really seem outlandish though, does it? This has happened before. We kind of expect people to try this again some day. If somebody called in and said that God was going to stop the plane...well, actually we'd probably assume that terrorists were coming in the name of their God, and still investigate it. If they suggested, however, that a space alien was trying to escape justice back to his generational mothership hiding behind the moon via the ship he has stashed in the elevator, and if he did he'd end up launching the doomsday device and destroy us all, they probably wouldn't close the elevators. Even though it's a more impactful claim. Even though it is, in principle, possible.

And on the nature of truth, and for the sake of good quotes, I give you Spock: "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

The nature of religious claims is that their most general senses can never be eliminated, no matter whether they are true or not, so it's basically irrelevant. Specific claims can possibly be taken down (although literally anything can be overruled by a deceptive omnipotent force or forces). Also, Spock was quoting his ancestor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who said it through the mouth of Sherlock Holmes.

I've heard another "Christian" say global warming is a good thing if it's part of the rapture (that 19th century weirdness from cutting and pasting bits of the Bible until it says what you want). I've put their self description in quotes because it was one of those groups that think the poor and the sick are being punished by God so should never be helped but merchants in the temple are fine.

Many Christians believe in a Millennial Kingdom [gotquestions.org] which will be reestablished here on earth. If this particular person believed so, then he would not believe global warming is a good thing. Not that God wouldn't allow it to happen, but that God would punish those who try to prevent the kingdom from coming. This means that if global warming has its way and the earth is no longer habitable, I'm pretty sure God would do something about it, including but not limited to restoring it to Eden-esque perfection, and p

Einstein used the peer review process. He didn't assert a cabal of Newtonian conspirators faking international consensuses and rigging who gets into journals and who doesn't in order to install a socialist world order.

Wind will become popular because it is cheap. Solar panels, in there current form, are not workable. For solar energy, we will end up with solar thermal, concentrating panels, or solar chemical. Think about millions of little steam engines made of plastic, all put together in a Chinese toy factory. It is always more economical to have concentrating PV instead of just direct PV, as long as PV material is more expensive by area than plastic. Solar chemical energy could be used to produce hydrogen from water, and produce more usable fuels such as gasoline by reacting the hydrogen with carbon dioxide.

Uh.... I'm confused. Are you arguing that conserving materials is a badly thought out idea? How so? Or are you just generally pissed off about badly thought ideas? If it's latter, sorry to hear that - there really can't be any group of people left in the world you don't hate, as there isn't a single one that has never proposed a single bad idea.

As for the Gore dig, I always thought that was sour grapes. You can't tell me that if you had enough money where you can create a business that allows you to pay yourself, you wouldn't do it. Everyone's just mad that they don't have the resources to set up a gig like that.

Its becoming clear that a small core of wealthy individuals who benefit from laissez faire have hijacked the mind-share of you drones by their propaganda. Anthropogenic Global Warming is real according to the science and the reason we might get less optimal legislation is because of your drone like repetition of the views of the American Al Quaida - the Neocons or whatever they call themselves these days.

Let me put this bluntly, the biggest enemy of humanity is not global warming or terrorists, its you. The

Not in the least. Isn't it funny how we don't mind laws as long as they're laws we agree with? Isn't it funny how we like the free market unless the free market eats our marketshare? Isn't it funny how you don't mind that companies want government in YOUR life but out of THEIR business?

No, he did not invent inter-networking, nor is he claiming so. The Gore Bill funded projects of the National Science Foundation, among others, that culminated in the enrichment of the Internet as a medium for economic as well as educational growth, and the mainstream acceptance of the World Wide Web--which eventually turned into the economic engine it is now.

The technical infrastructure and lower level protocols may have remained the same, but the focus and spirit of use has changed considerably.

If you cite evidence that glaciers are receding, they'll tell you Al Gore can't keep his facts straight. Suggest that GWB's anti-terror strategy is a disaster, and they'll respond with some nonsense about Barack Obama's real name.

Why is it not equally lazy to paint all "right wingers" as Birthers, and people who cannot argue with science even though there are tons of carefully thought out articles from real scientists questioning AGW - in many aspects turning out to be right in doing so? Those who questioned "glaciers melting before 2035" were laughed at as loons before and told the science was carefully studied, when it turned out it was not. Why can YOU not believe there are and can be scientists who do not agree with the current AGW theories?

Your whole post frankly struck me as full of such lazy stereotyping, with no effort on your part made to understand the reasoning behind those who do not buy into the same group-think you do.

To group all right wingers as birthers would be lazy however, most of the birthers are right wing.

and people who cannot argue with science even though there are tons of carefully thought out articles from real scientists questioning AGW

Well for one thing, not all right wingers (ie republicans/libertarians) deny AGW. Approximately 25% acknowledge some degree of the phenomenon. For another, the vast majority of attacks on AGW that have been launched (primarily from the right) have been... poorly thought out to put it mildly. The CRU hack frothing as the prime example of this.

Those who questioned "glaciers melting before 2035" were laughed at as loons before and told the science was carefully studied, when it turned out it was not.

The problem is that this error was found not by an AGW "skeptic" but by a scientist in full agreement with the scientific consensus on AGW.

Why can YOU not believe there are and can be scientists who do not agree with the current AGW theories?

Few dispute that there are scientists out there that don't agree with the AGW consensus, the same can be said of Evolutionary theory, it's just that as in the case of Evolution, the vast vast vast majority of skeptics are not in relevant fields and have not actually done any relevant research on the topic. It is possible to have legit skepticism about AGW; it just requires actual work and data to back up the assertion made. The same applies to both sides of the issue, it just seems that the vast majority of AGW "skeptics" aren't holding up their end of the bargain.

I don't understand the mocking and hostility of the opponents of climate-change theory toward the supporters.

Pretty simple, the naturally human instinct is payback for years of mockery. And indeed why should only one side be allowed vitrol and mockery and demand it not be turned against them when the tide of fate ebbs for them?

I don't think it's productive but it's understandable, and honestly well deserved.

Even if the theories are wrong, reducing green-house emissions (etc) won't hurt anything but the pocket book. I know this is no small thing, especially in the context of a global economy and global competition, but the consequences of ignoring things if man-made climate change is a reality are bad.

Do you believe in God? Because you have just stated you must. After all, the consequence for being wrong is fairly horrific since a lifetime here is nothing compared to an infinity of afterlife, right?

Here is what I know from years of traveling the world. If you want to see true devastation, you have only to travel to where people are generally poor. It's hard to save a forest when millions are looking for firewood (see: Haiti).

So you claim we should look upon hurting people in an economic downturn as a small consequence to avert potential disaster, but all I can envision is a global environmental cataclysm as economies fall and people do what they do best - survive at any cost.

Far better to invest heavily in alternative energy now, like nuclear and solar, so that we can all get off the oil train. The chances of GW actually causing enough problems to really bother us all before we can make that happen are to my mind exceedingly low vs. the certainty of what happens when we make a whole lot of people poor.

Even if the theories are wrong, reducing green-house emissions (etc) won't hurt anything but the pocket book.

I think the problem is that that is the wrong approach. So many of the greenie eco-nuts seem to have this mindset that helping the environment means hurting ourselves, and that's where the problems start. Check it out:

We improve our energy grid with nuclear energy. We use the newest models, the ones that recycle the 'waste,' the only thing it releases into the enviroment is steam. That cuts out all the nasty of coal. Meanwhile, we research solar to make it more usable than it is now. That makes energy cheaper, which helps manufacturing ect. and improves the economy.

We really need to develop an alternative to oil. Either hydrogen power, or a biofuel, and not corn, something decent, like desert based enclosed algae farms. Once a suitable solution is found, we put it into mass production. This cuts off the huge amounts of money we send to foreign oil sources, and if it works well enough, cuts the cost of travel & shipping, and may even provide an export, possibly cuts off terrorism funding, which really improves the economy.

We improve our agriculture. We diversify our crops, do improvement work to breed commercially viable species of new crops, which will reduce the amount of inputs that are needed to keep crops pest and disease free. We develop and grow more locally adapted varieties of traditional crops, and grow the new ones in the best possible areas. In both cases, use techniques like intercroping and crop rotation to further reduce the need for inputs like pesticides and fertilizers. In all cases, we develop new traits that can be inserted via genetic engineering to further reduce inputs and increase yields, as well as open up previously inariable land for cultivation. This lowers food prices, might even increase overall health, and improves the economy.

Certainty, of course, it must be stated that regulation must happen, but whether AGW is real or not, who wants to be breathing in smoke and drinking polluted water anyway? Again, rather than saying 'Waah, industry!' what we need to do is ask, 'How can we develop cost effective solutions to maintain air/water quality without a significant decrease in business?'

We need to get over this mindset that green technology and green lifestyles must by necessity hurt the economy. We don't need to go back to the caves, we need to go back to the labs. Green technology is good for the economy. Greenie technology, on the other hand, the feel good hippy-dippy stuff, that's another story, but if done right, there is no problem whatsoever. Everybody wins. If man is causing global warming, this is what we should do, and even if it isn't us, we should do this sort of stuff anyway. What we should do is clear. That there is a political controversy is just baffling.

Which global warming model predicted massive blizzards in the northern hemisphere in 2010?

None. Because no global climate model predicts local occurrences in a single season. What they do predict though is that increases in temperatures will lead to more snowfall in certain areas as what would normally be dry cold air is now warm, moist air hitting a cold front. Which leads to snow. That's just basic physics.